Carla - One of the organizers
La Ruta de los Conquistadores is a mountain bike race in Costa Rica that uses the logo "The Toughest Mountain Bike Race on the Planet". Having departed on this race from the Pacific coast town of Punta Leona at 5:00 a.m. on November 16 and having arrived at the Caribbean port city of Puerto Limon at 4:05 p.m. on November 18, I am willing to confirm that race organizer Roman Urbina, a seasoned professional triathlete himself, is not engaging in hyperbole in assigning this one-line description to this three-hundred-mile stage race. In fact, I hardly know Roman personally at all, but he must be a man of considerable imagination and administrative skill to have conceived of and realized this unthinkable adventure event for nine consecutive years. He should be placed in the category the most ambitious, enterprising and, above all, imaginative individuals whom I know in Latin America, comparable to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Colonel Aureliano Buendia (1) .
For me, the best moments came after the last Control Station on each of the three days, racing down single-track roads to the finish with a feeling of exhilaration over the sheer speed, the singular beauty of it all, and just knowing that another day of brutal climbing, heat, mud and rain had been completed. The Spanish Conquistador Juan de Caballon had preceded us by several centuries on this Ruta, writing later that "Os machacara las piernas y os debilitara la mirada" (2). I pondered these words near the end of each day at that exact point in La Ruta when the legs start feeling like strains of shredded lead (3).
The richness and variety of this three-day stage race left us speechless. A handful of the most elite cyclists in the world (U.S. pro champ Tinker Juarez and several Latin professionals who are his equal or superior) raced across Costa Rica with noteworthy velocity, but even the most elite and veteran endurance racers--professionals, semi-professional (sponsored) and amateurs (non-sponsored) alike--were left drained at the end of each day, many finishing the day in hospitals or receiving I.V.'s to keep their bodies functioning and recovering for yet another day of brutal physical abuse (or the return flight home). Very few of the bodies and bicycles were functioning beyond perhaps 80% by Day 3, not to speak of the large number who never made it to Day 3 because of accidents or breakdowns (physical, mental, spiritual, or mechanical breakdowns, or some combination of the four). Neither before nor now (a week later, as I write this), does it seem humanly possible to traverse so many climbs, so many rivers, so much mud, on a human-powered machine of any sort. The whole thing, indeed, seems unthinkable.
In general, La Ruta was an overwhelmingly positive experience, but my worst moments came when the forces (4) seemed to conspire to almost prevent me from completing La Ruta. On Day 1, the forces gave me four flat tires, although the last three flats had a mechanical explanation at some level: faulty rim tape aggravated by all the water in the rivers. By the time I was fixing the fourth flat, I was starting to melt in the 100-degree temperature along with many other bikers who barely survived the heat or failed to complete Day 1 because of heat exhaustion. Duct tape saved my Day 1 (and my Ruta race), for it was my temporary rim tape for over 200 miles of this race, applied in mid-afternoon in the jungles of Day 1. I did suffer a few moments of temporary desperation after the fourth flat and briefly in the late afternoon of all three days, for a variety of reasons relating to exhaustion and patience.
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Loading Bikes Nov. 15 Carla - One of the organizers |
Unloading Bikes Nov. 15 in Punta Leona |
We began the race on the Pacific side, the West Coast of Costa Rica, with a home base in a resort at Punta Leon, where we arrived on Thursday, November 15, 2001, by bus from the Hotel Villa Touron in San Jose (5). At 3:00 p.m. that day, Race Director Roman Urbina reviewed the written rules and route with the 290 professional, semi-professional and amateur mountain racers registered for The Toughest Mountain Bike Race on the Planet. He placed emphasis on the details relating to the most dangerous obstacles (narrow, dilapidated railroad tressels we were using, deep river crossings with rapid currents, etc.) that might inhibit us from completing this race as official finishers because of the time we might lose crossing them incorrectly, or not successfully crossing them at all (suffering serious injury or death). The race allowed approximately twelve hours (until sunset or shortly thereafter, including twelve hours and twenty minutes on Day 1) to complete each stage, thus permitting us to continue the next stage as official racers (6). Roman's introduction left us rookies to the event with a more detailed and deep understanding of the physical and mental demands of this dangerous, unthinkable adventure race.
After Roman's review of the rules and route, I took a spin around the resort on my Moots YB Beat to take some pictures, and a strong rider from Tennessee whom I see each year at the Leadville 100, Vic, appeared on his bike. We decided to take pictures together at the beginning on the Pacific, at the end on the Caribbean. At 5:00 p.m., we had an early dinner to retire early to bed for our 3:00 a.m. wakeup the next morning.
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Vic and The Wasp |
After arising at 3:00 a.m. and enjoying a fulfilling breakfast of gallo pinto (rice and beans), fruit, bacon and eggs, cranberry juice and one cup of coffee, I departed with approximately 290 others up a paved road in the dark at 5:00 a.m. behind the six police dirt motor bikes and two ambulances that escorted us for three days. Within fifteen minutes there was enough sunlight to see the paved road that lead toward the mountains from the Pacific Coast, and within thirty minutes we were on the first of innumerable steep climbs (perhaps 15% to 25% grade), steep enough to put me in the granny gear and sweating profusely in the jungle humidity at the outset of the race. The climb continued until 6:30 a.m. for me (perhaps in the middle of the 290 pack), when I reached the first Control Station at Bijagual. I happily noted that I had arrived there a full hour ahead of the 7:30 a.m. cut-off.
Out of Bijuagal we descended quickly down more dirt and paved roads with the adrenalin rush of the speed, with the idyllic jungle setting around us. I heard some screams of joy as we flew downhill curves at perhaps 35-40 m.p.h. Then we braked as we turned left and entered a steep, wet, single track that looked inviting at first, but soon turned to minimally rideable mud. Within just a few minutes after I started down this mud path, I observed the crash and piling up of approximately six bikers, stacked in the mud upon each other like piglets right in the middle of what I thought was going to be my line. I dismounted immediately to survey this section with caution and proceeded thereafter up and down the rain-soaked jungle with great care. Soon, I ceded the single track to a young Jamaican who zipped past me on his Specialized Stump Jumper, then proceeded to slip on the mud, lose control, and flip over on his back. (He used this style to stay far ahead of me until the last climbs near sunset.) As we traversed our first river (without portaging), I decided to count exactly how many rivers I would cross in three days. By the end of this first morning, however, I had crossed so many that I lost track.
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Climbs of Day 1 |
From what I can remember, we must have spent a couple of hours riding and portaging through the mud single track, mud roads, mud embankments, muddy climbs, muddy descents. Some of the mud was ankle deep. By the late morning, the route was more rideable, and the temperature was rising, now reaching perhaps the low 90s with high humidity. This is the section were I started fixing flats, eventually applying some duct tape to my rim to replace the rim tape ruined by the water. Javier, a kind Costa Rican in a broken-down truck (providing support for riders of La Nacion, Costa Rican riders) provided me with a floor pump and some help with one tire change. A muscular rider from Florida, Steve,lent me two tubes since his failing bladder prevented him from making it far beyond the muddy section. As the temperature rose to over 100 degrees that day, numerous riders, including my Washington buddy, Brett Wolff (one of the most skilled down hillers I've ever seen), suffered heat exhaustion. At a Control Station, I acquired some black electrical tape (lacking access to rim tape) to serve as a backup for the moment when I imagined getting flat number 5 and needing to replace more rim tape. But flat number 5 never came in the entire race.
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Climbs of Day 1 |
The Control Stations were uniformly superb the first day and beyond, with delicious tropical fruit (papaya, bananas, pineapple), sandwiches with a thin layer of (high protein) fish, some quick energy in "Energy" packs (a kind of banana cube not found in U.S. ). The organizers and their assistants were also superb. The last section of Day 1, after we left the last Control Station, began as dirt road downhill, and it soon evolved into classic, fast, mostly downhill single track. Since it was a little wet, I proceeded with caution. Then we went back to the steep climbs, including this incredibly steep (could it have been a 25% grade?) climb on a concrete road. Whatever it was, many of the bikers around me walked it, and I struggled up in my 34 cog and granny gear in front, not advancing much faster than the hikers. I wish I had some pictures of that single track through the rain forest, that concrete climb that finished off a few bikers, but I didn't carry a camera on Day 1.
My Day 1 was so delayed by the four flats that I barely made the 5:20 cutoff time. At the "Meta" (finish line), I got a little applause by the kindest of the race supporters as I entered the tent area at sunset, which was around 5:20. The scene was quite memorable and also most worthy of pictures (if I had a camera handy and it weren't getting dark rapidly): some awful looking cadavers were getting I.V.'s under one tent, some other collapsed bodies getting massages under another tent, mud-covered bikes getting sprayed and lubed under another tent). I ate some chicken and rice, chatted a bit with the two eco-challenge racers, Laura and Karina, about Day 1. Clever (perhaps sandbagging) Laura, a professional eco-challenge racer, had smoked all the Costa Rican professional women cyclists who traditionally win this race. I heard Tinker Juarez crossed the finish line first, too, despite the fact that Costa Rican pros always win this race, and several other World Cup finalists were there to provide more than respectable competition, including the national mountain biking champion from Mexico. Setting aside the best professional athletes in the world, the more human (highly trained elite amateurs fundamentally obsessed with cycling and their bodies) had fared better than in the past in day one: slightly over half had finished Day 1.
On the bus back to San Jose, we were too exhausted to engage in lengthy conversation about the day, little beyond the necessary "How'd it go?" and the short response, "Not bad." I chatted briefly with the cyclist sitting next to me, a quiet and strong rider from Truckee, California who had finished Day 1 successfully, but his bike was too damaged to continue. In the true spirit of mountain biking, he offered me his extra tubes to give me some spares for Day 2 after my disastrous Day 1 with respect to keeping tires inflated. Our bus didn't actually arrive back to the fine Hotel Villa Touron in San Jose for quite a while: two bikers were so marginally surviving that we had to stop at a drugstore and buy I.V.'s which a couple of pro racers well acquainted with such procedures administered to the two suffering cyclists. One was this amazing gentleman from Holland, Lauke, a 61-year old who already had completed La Ruta twice (living in Puerto Rico, he was well-acquainted with the mud and the language of Costa Rica). The Laukes of this world, of course, are the ones who keep the rest of us "middle-age" riders (old enough to be the fathers of the winners of La Ruta) training and pedaling. At the Farmacia it was now mid-evening and I was aware that I needed some additional food in the system, as well as some stretching, in order to survive Day 2. So while they administered the I.V. right there in the Farmacia, I sat on the sidewalk and drank several bottles of orange juice, ate crackers for sodium replacement (the only other food at the Farmacia was candy bars), and did some of my yoga routines. While I did this stretching, Fred from Oakland chatted to me about something, but I was so mentally fatigued that my attention span was probably about four seconds. As our bus neared the Hotel Villa Touron in San Jose about 8:30 p.m., the hardcore (but eternally pleasant and patient) organizer Carla announced the plans for Day 2: arise at 3:00 a.m., breakfast in the hotel restaurant at 3:30 a.m., bus departs for Starting Line at 4:00 a.m., clean and lube bikes, begin race at 6:00 a.m. from downtown San Jose. About 50 bikers crowded to the registration desk at the hotel, desperate for beds. Observing the scene and the likelihood that I wouldn't even have a room key for at least a half hour, I walked into the fairly upscale hotel restaurant where middle-class Costa Ricans were dining in their sports coats and Miami-purchased clothes, sat down in my still wet and muddy Moots jersey and brown legs, and ordered what I needed without even glancing at the menu: a plate full of black beans and fish, preceded by a bowl of seafood soup. The waiter fully understood: with no questions asked and no talk about the day's specials, he brought me all the protein and carbos I needed to aspire to spend Day 2 on a bicycle climbing 45 miles up to the top of the Irazu Volcano towering 12,000 feet above San Jose. When my plate was clean, he handed me a bill in Colones , so I handed him a pile of Colones that seemed to not only cover the cost of the protein and carbos, but obviously enough tip to produce, in addition, a smile and wishes for buena suerte in continuing on La Ruta, something that every tico whom I met seemed to know about (but since every tico I met was on the route of La Ruta, this observation might be superfluous and/or tautological). That evening and throughout the race, I wondered if the Costa Ricans were so exceptionally kind because they admired us (unlikely), because they felt sorry for us (more likely), or if they were just that way (that's what many say). But, actually, La Ruta is more about surviving the next 100 yards than understanding such deep human questions, so I never enjoyed the luxury of contemplating such issues of national identity at great length. In fact, that evening I barely managed to clean my body, get the next day's vitamin replacements ready, fill my little plastic bags with Sustained Energy powder, and insert two aspirins and one Melatonin into my mouth before falling asleep for the four hours I had to engage in this activity before heading up the volcano for hours on my Moots mountain bike.
Day 1 was considered the most challenging among organizers and veterans. Roman Urbina had told us the in the opening meeting that if we survived Day 1, we had a good chance of completing the race. Indeed, Day 1 had been tough, comparable in physical demands to the Leadville 100, particularly with respect to the endless , truly unthinkable amount of climbing.
Last summer, however, I had sat on the steps of the Top of the World Cyclery in Leadville the day before the race and heard horror stories about Day 2 of La Ruta from a racer from Tennessee (not my buddy Vic) who had become so frozen at the top of the Irazu Volcano that he still seemed traumatized as he told his story on those sunny steps in Leadville. I've suffered the severe discomfort of cold of high-altitude downhills before, and the top of the downhill from that volcano is what I was most worried about in the entire race. Other riders in Leadville, by the way, had more positive things to say about La Ruta, but the racer from Tennessee actually told me he would never go again and would not recommend that I go either.
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Cleaning bikes in San Jose NOv. 17, 5:00 A.M. |
After a 3:30 am. breakfast of delicious gallo pinto, the bus ride and the bike cleaning, at 6:00 a.,m. we departed for the start of Day 2, right up a wide avenue of downtown San Jose, lined by well-wishers, curiosos, and tico cycling enthusiasts who expressed their good will by applauding, yelling encouragement (!fuerza!), and honking with their thumbs up. A few local roadies and mountain bikers accompanied us for a while from San Jose up the climb toward the Volcan Irazu. We climbed under a constant rain and cool temperatures all morning, mostly on pavement, with a few sections of both rideable dirt and portage-only mud. A pleasant young Californian on a smart Ellsworth was interested in chatting about upscale bikes. This was certainly a worthy topic, but my body temperature was dropping so I apologized to him for having to increase my speed up the final stretches, or what I hoped were the final stretches. As we approached the summit, it rained harder and the wind blew with a progressively increasing velocity. My body temperature was dropping. I was remembering that traumatized racer sitting on the sunny steps in Leadville who had strongly discouraged me from registering for La Ruta. I noticed that riders with support vehicles were stuffing newspapers under their jerseys as we approached the summit of the volcano, thus preparing for the downhill. So after about five hours of continuous climbing, I speculated that the end was near.
After another hour or so (a six-hour climb for me, and I was not among the last to arrive at the volcano), I reached the summit. When I finally got there, my favorite Costa Rican in the race, el maestro Mario, had just arrived, which I interpreted as an extremely good sign with respect to the timing of my own climb. I jumped into the back of one of the organizer's vans, used an old sweatshirt I found there to dry off a bit, put some plastic on my head, tore off a piece of cardboard from a box to substitute for the now unavailable newspapers, stuffed my pockets with as many of those banana cubes I could fit, and headed down the muddy and rocky descent at the top of the volcano in the wind and rain.
The next few hours of Day 2 were one continuous wet, muddy, rocky downhill ride, perhaps of 30 or 40 miles, but it really wasn't anywhere near as treacherous as the anecdotal information had suggested. First, the rain had brought milder temperatures than the previous year, so weren't excessively uncomfortable from the cool temperature on the downhill. Although technical in some places, at no point was it particularly steep or dangerous for a 51-year old amateur riding with caution.There were a few river crossings and improvised wood bridges, but nothing that required even a pause before traversing it. The worst part was la garua, the constant fog that made visibility sometimes difficult. There were some fascinating and engaging moments in the rain forest-- heavy green vegetation, prodigious broad leafed plants, like in those old Tarzan flicks. This was so much fun, in fact, that I even enjoyed seeing my buddy Brett (now fully recovered from the heatstroke of Day 1) leave me convincingly behind, and with such rapidity that I could only be impressed with his downhill skill and enjoy his moment.
The truth is, I was also really hoping to see some monkeys on Day 2 or 3, but my encounters with fauna were limited: a mosquito who visited my left leg on Day 1 while fixing my first flat, a huge vulture-like bird that I startled somewhere, the deep grown of some large mammal far off in the jungle on Day 3 (a jaguar?). No poison dart frogs or boa constrictors. No monkeys. One of the organizers had told me on the bus rip to Punta Leona that sometimes the monkeys throw stuff (coconuts? banana peels? feces?) at the humans. When I heard this story in the van before this unthinkable jungle race, it sounded potentially dangerous; but by Day 2, I was imagining the devious coconut-throwing monkeys as welcome entertainment and welcome distraction from the increasingly tiring task at hand (the next 100 yards of mud and rocks). I was consoled (and my endless downhill ride in la garua with no monkeys) by reminding myself that riders like Brett, of course, had ample opportunity to practice in downhill mud up in states like Washington, whereas in Southern California, we considered riding in wet dirt an ecologically unsound practice.
As we proceeded down through the rain-drenched rain forest, numerous bikers were losing their brakes due to the effects of rain and mud. This unprepared European gentleman (German? Dutch?) almost conned me out of my only extra pair of brake pads, but just before handing them over I checked my own to discover I only had less than an eighth of an inch remaining. So I apologized about my own imminent braking crisis and put the one pair of replacements on the front wheel at the very next Control Station, where they were still happily serving all the fruit, dry fish sandwiches and "Energy" packs that we could stuff in our faces and pockets. (Dr. Mike my chiropractor, Malcom Bader and a few of the other training partners know that I was also consuming high amounts of E-caps, protein replacements and special fats that I had brought along from California, but I won't bore the non-cyclists reading this account with more minute details about this.) As I reached the last Control Station of Day 2, I sat down under the tent and removed all my specialized clothing (plastic bag on head, cardboard under jersey). The organizer there told me that all that remained was ten miles of downhill pavement. Ten miles of downhill on pavement seemed about as likely as a telegram from Trek inviting me to replace Lance Armstrong for next year`s Tour de France, for never, under any circumstances, had the "next section" been as easy as was forecast by the locals. Surprisingly, then, the end of Day 2 was a very fast and entertaining ten-mile paved downhill straight into a hotel parking lot in Turrialba, a semi-tropical and apparently laid-back town of some 75,000 inhabitants. I had arrived one hour and fifteen minutes before the cutoff (with no flats to repair on Day 2, probably because I had toted 3 extra tubes up that 45-mile climb to the volcano in the rain). Life was suddenly almost as good as it could get on Day 2 (unless the devious monkeys had appeared): great food (tasty portions of protein and carbos) , a great massage (two Costa Rican masseuses, one male and one female, applied simultaneous pressure to the muscles and got the lactic acid flowing out), a great bike cleaning with power spray. The bus was departing for our hotel right before my massage, so I told them to depart and that I'd find the hotel on my bike later on. A couple of hours later, I followed a van in the dark over to the hotel on the outskirts of town, did some stretching, ate two protein bars, did more stretching, took two aspirins and the Melatonin, and slept profoundly for about seven hours before arising at 4:45 for a hearty breakfast of an entire two plates of gallo pinto and Day 3.
The atmosphere before the departure on Day 3 was upbeat. Spirits were high among the bikers there (obviously not for those who were taken to the hospital at the end of Day 2, nor for those whose bikes were now unrideable). I had the opportunity to chat with cycling celebrity Tinker Juarez, who impressed me with his modesty and pleasant demeanor. Bonilla, the Costa Rican national champ, had outraced Juarez on Day 2, but Tinker seemed to wisely accept that simply as the outcome, and offered no particular excuse for his slightly inferior performance. Juarez kindly posed for a picture with me, and I think this moment contributed to the adrenalin flowing earlier than usual for a morning bike ride. I decided to take along my Kodak throw-away camera for Day 3, now confident that I could stop for pictures and still make the time cut-off to be an official finisher. Day 3 started exactly like Days 1 and 2: straight up, then down, then steeper up, endlessly. But the climbs were either paved or on solid dry dirt for the first three hours, and Dr. Mike's vitamin and muscle recovery plan was functioning exceptionally well: my legs felt good and I managed to pull ahead of many of the amateurs during this first three grueling hours, playing tag with the Latin pros at the back of the pro pack until about midday, when we hit the technical sections, dicey tressel crossings, river crossings, and riding down the middle of railroad tracks. Then the elite semi-pros and amateurs, those bastards, uh, I mean those cool mountain biking buddies, caught up and passed as I attempted to figure out how to survive this adventure in which not only a finishing medal, but one's life was at stake.
In the early afternoon, I accumulated a little good karma by stopping to assist a couple of Latin pros, probably young Colombians, who seemed to be having problems with a flat tire. I threw them one of my four extra tubes (mostly to help them out, of course, but not unaware that I was lightening my own load of excessive tires). As it turned out, they didn't need a tube; they needed a whole frigging tire. That's when this doctor of Latin American literature learned a new linguistic distinction, that subtle one between a llanta and a neumatico. But the way the young cycling intellectual explained this matter with such philological fervor made me think he was probably an erudite Colombian aspiring to enter the graduate program at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo after he finishes riding all the toughest mountain bike races on the planet, or por lo menos todas aquellas carreras complicaditas entre Puerto Limon y Puerto Vallarta antes de retirarse en favor de una vida de mayor gentileza. For me, both tires and tubes had been llantas, but nowadays (post-La Ruta), this is an unacceptable linguistic simplification.
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One of the river crossings |
I used the last dozen pictures remaining on my camera well before arriving at the jungle, but since the devious monkeys never did appear, I didn't actually care that much. I just wish I had a picture of the river crossing where the water was chest high and we had to hold on to a rope with one hand and our bikes with the other to struggle across. (Fortunately, Riverside biker and computer whiz Malcom Bader found this picture on the websight of La Ruta.) I came close to losing my bike and a shoe. I do not regret not having any pictures of the old railroad tressels we crossed, however, because I need to forget about those things before next year or I won't ever do this race again (or probably even want to enter the country again, for I found those tressels "stressful," far more stressful than any climb we had done).
We zipped through little villages, isolated little Macondos, along the dirt roads and tracks. Some families sat on the porches to applaud and yell words of encouragement from their wooden minimalist abodes. Children offered bottles of water and reached out their hands for a slap as we pedaled down the main streets, usually dirt. We complied. A memorable highlight of this section of La Ruta was when children sprayed us with hoses as we continued east. About five of these cool sprays improved the ride in the afternoon heat and humidity.
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Crossing a bridge Nov. 18 |
Desending in the jungle Nov. 18 Eric from Wisconsin |
Day 3 was full of bizarre "adventure race" type obstacles for which I was minimally prepared compared to most of the others, particularly those who had already completed eco-challenges in Africa, Tibet, and the like. In addition to the stressful river and train tressel crossings, there were the infamous railroad tracks. Most veterans had referred to approximately ten tortuous kilometers riding down the middle of the tracks and getting one final beating of the shoulders because of all the bouncing. Others referred to seeing bikers falling because of the narrow margins in which it was possible to ride. Others claimed it might well be closer to twenty kilometers. Since all the distances were so enormous compared to one's usual biking experience (when is the last time you did a 45-mile continuous climb on a bicycle?), and since the weather and dirt conditions change so radically from one year to the next in the jungle, the anecdotes were actually less in the category of precise information and more in the category of vague metaphors for another difficult day of "The Toughest Mountain Bike Race on the Planet." In fact, in the early afternoon, as we rode along a dirt road parallel to the tracks, one biker even claimed he had heard that the ride on the railroad tracks had been eliminated from this year's route. Wrong. We did bump along approximately 10 kilometers (or was it 20?) for a quite a while in the afternoon. I had great difficulty at first, and finally started walking quite a bit of it after once falling softly into a heap of garbage along the tracks. Once I did finally develop a rhythm and a method for riding on the gravel and tressels between the narrow-gauge railroad tracks, I was almost at the end of that particular cycling exercise.
As I marched along the infamous 10 (or 20) kilometers of tracks, being passed from time to time by my cool mountain biking buddies who had learned in previous years how to negotiate this specialized maneuver, I realized that I was having a hallucination. I've been on races on three previous occasions when I suffered visual hallucinations, but the circumstances were basically identical: 24-30 hours of sleep deprivation, coupled with prodigious amounts of caffeine to stay awake and "alert". But this time, I reflected, it was bizarre that I was hallucinating about a big train engine approaching, for I had enjoyed seven hours of sleep and had consumed far less than my usual dosis of caffeine, due primarily to the remarkable lack of Starbucks in the Costa Rican jungles and total absence of espresso machines at the Control Stations. I took mental note to talk to Dr. Mike back in San Bernardino about the strange circumstances of this hallucination (Day 3, after 7 hrs of sleep) of an exceptionally large engine that was far oversize for the tracks. Then I noticed that the bikers in front of me were seemingly suffering the exact same hallucination: they moved off the tracks about 200 yards ahead to let the virtual engine pass by. Maybe I was in some kind of hallucination black hole that the veterans don't tell the rookies about, I reflected. Then I realized that a real engine, an oversize engine with a huge cyclops light was approaching slowly, perhaps 10 miles per hour. I stepped off the tracks about five feet, turned my back, and used the waiting time to urinate toward the banana trees, my back to the tracks. When the train was about 20 feet away, I became aware that this engine hung over the tracks far further than any train I had ever seen and it was going to demolish my Moots. I grabbed the titanium and slid it away just as the steel machine passed. Obviously, I now understood, the train was not a hallucination, but a clear case of magic realism, a common phenomenon in Macondo-like regions of Latin America (7).
The sign for La Ruta was placed prominently on the tracks and directed us to the last Control Station before the finish line. The organizers pointed me in the direction of a dirt road that had been described as a fast, last ten kilometers into the finish line in Puerto Limon on the Caribbean coast. I put the Moots in the big chainring for a last sprint to the end. After a brisk kilometer or two, I started slowing down a bit for mud puddles. As the puddles got larger and deeper, I slowed more and eventually slipped into middle chainring to get through the now ankle-deep water. Still pedaling, I slowly (and gleefully) passed some of the buddies who had passed me on the torturous tracks; they were walking through the puddles--now more like a swamp--reaching their knees. According to them, this was the first time in several years that this road was flooded for the final stretch of La Ruta. They exited from the water, heading back up to the tracks. Consequently, I contemplated which would be preferable: a slow trudge through the now waist-deep water or a potentially quicker spin along the dreaded railroad tracks. Even if this swamp had alligators (which I was relatively certain it did not), I decided that I preferred it to the dreaded railroad tracks, particularly since this warm water was providing a massaging effect to my sore muscles. But that only proved true for another quarter of mile, at which point I was forced to the dreaded tracks one last time for another mile. Once I was able to return to the road, the surface quality gradually improved. Large almendro trees, the beach, and the sun were on the left; tropical foliage, palm trees and banana trees on the right. (Later, I noticed on the map that the whole right hand side, directly east of me, consisted of several miles of tropical swamp, so perhaps there were some crocodiles, poison dart frogs and devious monkeys to be found in the area after all.) I interpreted an occasional SUV vehicle as a sign that I was nearing Puerto Limon. I passed through a village that someone said was a few kilometers from Puerto Limon. Back to dirt road, then paved road and big chainring. I arrived at the port shipyard (of Puerto Limon?) where a La Ruta sign pointed us to the direction of the finish line another kilometer or two away.
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Moots rider and Tinker Juarez Nov. 18 | Moots rider and Brett Woltt the downhiller Nov. 18 |
I crossed the finish line a little after 4:00 p.m., perhaps 4:05 or so, solo. After some food and pictures with Vic from Tennessee, I boarded a buseta (small bus) headed for San Jose. We spent forever exiting Puerto Limon, going back and forth to a hospital where one of the professional cyclists was apparently spending some time before his next unthinkable mountain bike race, but certainly nothing as challenging as "The Toughest Mountain Bike Race on the Planet." (8). Among these pros, Bonilla had outraced Tinker once again, keeping Costa Rica's perfect record intact of always winning this race. But Tinker had conquered La Ruta in amazingly little time, and we all rode along content in our buseta, most pleased to have arrived to the Caribbean Coast on our bicycles, despite Juan de Caballon's admonition "Os machacara las piernas, os debilitara la mirada".
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El Maertro Mario Nov. 18 |
Vic and The Wasp Puerto Limon (the end) Nov. 18, 2001 |
NOTES
1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the author of the monumental novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and Colonel Aureliano Buendia is a Colombian General who fought 36 battles and lost them all. Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, and Buendia exists only as a fictional character (based on General General Uribe Uribe, who fought 36 battles in the Guerra de los Mil Dias in Colombia and lost them all).
2. Rough translation of Juan de Caballon's warning: "It will chew up your legs and weaken your sight".
3. For readers who have raced the Leadville 100, "The Highest and Toughest Mountain Bike Race" in the United States, I refer to that feeling frequently noted near the top of the climb of Columbine Mine at 11,000 feet, fifty miles into the race.
4. Of course, I'm not sure exactly what "the forces" are. For further explanation and/or speculation, join me for one of the long training rides. See also The Tao of Sports.
5. The race organizers offer a package, as part of the registration fee, that includes pick-up and transportation from airport in San Jose, hotel in San Jose the first night (most of us stayed in Hotel Villa Touron or Hotel Fadrique), transportation to resort in Punta Leona, and the remainder of transportation and meals necessary to complete the race. Roman Urbina's crew of race organizers, including Carla, Nadia,and others, was extremely efficient, helpful, and pleasant, although perhaps a little understaffed for the enormous logistical task they attempt to carry out. In the end, nevertheless, todo sale bien (all works out).
6.Racers who did not complete a stage within the time limits were no longer official racers, but they could continue the event as a a tour biker, accompanying the racers. Of the numerous bikers I met, however, not one appeared at the starting line on November 16 with the intentions of participating in a bide tour. Most of those who did not complete Day 1 were so physically and/or mentally exhausted that they returned home or rested in San Jose.
7. For an informed and complete introduction to the concept of magic realism in Latin American culture, see Seymour Menton's book on the subject, probably available at Amazon.com.
8. This is truly the toughest mountain bike race I've been able to find, three times as difficult as the Leadville 100, (Colorado) the Brian Head Century (Utah) and the Iditasport (Alaska). But I've heard anecdotes about a five-day mountain bike challenge in Germany. If you know of this event and have information, please let me know at RWilliams002@earthlink.net